


The Girl in the Mirror

by Bazylia_de_Grean



Series: Light, Smoke and Mirrors [7]
Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-30 15:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12111360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean
Summary: It’s not possible to explain something that’s become the marrow of her bones. The loneliness resounds so deeply within her that the silence is deafening. Gabrielle tries to work and pray for guidance and a chance to make things right, but as soon as the night comes it feels as if her sanity was slipping away from her thread by gossamer thread.Sometimes, in the dead of the night, there are other dreams. They come on their own, not brought by his magic – the magic is over now – she knows. Because they’re her memories.





	The Girl in the Mirror

Sometimes, in the stillness and silence of her cell, everything seems a dream. Her home in Arten is a faint memory, too distant to be true. Gilead and its gardens and its electric chandeliers, her husband and her son – it must have been a fairy tale someone told her. Pretty pictures, sweet pictures. All gone. Dug a deep well in her heart that was full of fresh water, life-giving water, but now it’s filled with bitterness and poison. Even Marten seems but a dream. Secret, thrilling while it lasted, soothing, touching that deepest and darkest part of her that was loneliness, and replacing pain with delight. It must have been magic.

A dream, just a dream. Is it possible that magic could exist in the world of bullets and guns and remains of electricity? Just a dream.

I’ve always been alone, Gabrielle thinks. This is her truth. This is _the_ truth. You were wrong, Marten, you were wrong. But what could a dream know?

During the day, when she’s weaving the belt for her son – a peace offering, an apology, forgive me, Roland, I was wrong – I was wrong – I was wrong – during the day, she knows it was true. It happened. It’s in the past. Real. Tangible, almost. It was true and there is a place still waiting for her in Gilead, perhaps, if she repents.

Her regret is honest. She regrets not being able to fall in love with her husband as he had with her. Marrying him for reason before she even tasted what love was. Not that she knows now, but… She could have waited. Could have given Steven time to think. Could have given herself time to think what being a wife means. She regrets they didn’t have time to learn to love each other, to learn patience and waiting, and how to soothe yearning when it ends. So many regrets, with Steven. So many sweet brittle memories that could have grown into something more, but they never had _time_. Steven is the part of her that is _sadness_ and _regrets_.

She regrets not having been a better mother to Roland. But she did all as it has been done for generations, as her mother had taught her, as Steven’s mother had approved. There is a place in her heart that will always hurt whenever she thinks of her son, and Gabrielle knows that is love. She gave everything she could, she tried to do her best, she poured so much hope into her son there is none left for her. But love – a mother’s love – has no bounds, no limits. Roland is the part of her that is profound _pain_ and unspeakable _beauty_ and eternal _light_.

And then there’s Marten… She regrets having looked at him in the perfectly wrong – right – moment, when the loneliness in her was a void that could have been filled only by another person’s presence and attention. She regrets not having met him earlier, before she married, when she was free to love. Perhaps he would have been as much a mistake, back then, but an honest mistake at least. Marten is the part of her that is made of _lies_ , lies she has been telling herself during sleepless nights, that everything was fine and she was all right and she would raise her head and get through that. Marten is the part of her that is made of _truth_ , truth that she was drowning and she would have suffocated if he was not there to breathe air into her with his kisses. Marten is the part of her that is blood and broken bones, the part her husband could never see, the truth that she is not a flower but a woman who wanted to be loved. Marten is the regret that she gave her heart to another only to have it taken away, piece by piece. She regrets giving them so willingly.

In the evenings, when the air is too still and the world is too dark to live in it but too bright to sleep yet, she lights candles and tries to write home. To her husband, first, but finds she has no words left for him. I wanted to love thee, Steven, she thinks, blinking away tears, all I wanted was to love thee, and see how it ended.

She tries writing to her son next. Tries and begins a thousand sentences and never finishes a single one. What’s clear in her mind seems a madwoman’s broken thoughts on paper.

Marten was poison. She shouldn’t have fallen for him, because she was married, because of a great many reasons. But she did, and it was poison because of its _sweetness_ , the sweetness that made her unable to turn away.

He build her a palace of roses and magic and kisses, caged her in his embrace, and she couldn’t get away because she _didn’t_ _want to_. Because it made her feel she belonged and was loved, and wasn’t so lonely anymore. That was what made it impossible to escape – that the trap was made of her most secret dreams, of the missing pieces of her heart.

How could she tell that to Roland, all that and more? How could she tell him all she did – all she forced him to go through by letting him see what he should have never learned about – that it was all for love? That Marten warned her and she heeded his warning, and all she wanted was to save her son, even at a high cost to him – and at _any_ cost to herself. I love thee, Roland, she thinks, I love thee, and see how it ended.

Sometimes, between the nightmares which bring her terrifying visions of the future, and the pretty pictures of her past, sometimes it seems Marten was just a dream, too. The fairy tale she’d had with her husband is over, and she watched its embers die, and her son grew out of the stories she tried to weave, and she’s made peace with that. But Marten – Marten is _now_ , recent, memories of him the only tangible thread she can grasp, but they are rose petals and torn silk and they’re slipping between her fingers.

Sometimes the nightmares are about him, too; that he never cared, not for her son – she knows he’s never liked Roland – and not for her, only used her – a pretty flower that was pleasant when picked, nothing more. Halls of Gilead, strangely dark, and echoing voices – Marten’s, but more than one, as if he was speaking to her from the glass in all the windows at the same time – voices that whisper, whisper endlessly, saying that all good will die in her son when she returns, that it will be because of her, that she will die because of it, that her son will doom himself because of it. Cold, cruel, terrible things, spoken in a calm, matter-of-factly voice, which is why they hit all the harder.

She wakes up at night from those dreams drenched with sweat, shivering and gasping for breath. They come back to her at dusk, when she’s trying to write letters. She throws away every precious piece of paper, because it becomes rubbish once she puts the pen to it. No sense, her words make no sense, not even to her. It’s not possible to explain something that’s become the marrow of her bones.

The loneliness resounds so deeply within her that the silence is deafening. Gabrielle tries to work and pray for guidance and a chance to make things right, but as soon as the night comes it feels as if her sanity was slipping away from her thread by gossamer thread.

Sometimes, in the dead of the night, there are other dreams. They come on their own, not brought by his magic – the magic is over now – she knows. Because they’re her memories.

She is standing in front of the mirror in her bedroom, unpinning her hair. Marten is there, on the threshold, leaning against the wall and watching her with a small smile on his lips. He likes seeing her with her hair down, as only her husband had seen her before him, he has told her as much. Never one to mince words, Marten.

She’s used to him watching her through the mirror, too – usually when she brushes her hair, and sometimes he makes a rose bloom among the tresses for a moment, and then it disappears, but the smell remains. On rare occasions, he watches her disrobe and change into her nightgown, but she always hides behind a bed curtain then, or just turns away demurely – as if it was even still possible – and he laughs at her from the glass, but can’t tear his gaze away all the same.

Gabrielle reaches up to unbraid her hair and his hands stop her. She hasn’t noticed when he moved over to her. Maybe when she blinked. She doesn’t lean into his hands right away, hesitates for a moment, wary – there is something about his magic – not illusions and tricks, but his real magic – that scares her. He knows, and doesn’t use it near her. Well, almost never.

Marten spreads her hair over her shoulders like a cloak – oh, how he would laugh at that choice of words if he could hear that thought – then brushes it aside and kisses the nape of her neck. Gabrielle closes her eyes, lets him pull her against his chest as his lips burn a trail down the line of her pulse. Soft and teasing, now, but she knows he can bite. His hands reach forward, to undo the fastenings of her gown. Gabrielle tenses – but not quite, because it’s impossible not to melt against him a little when his tongue is tasting her skin like this – and tries to pull away, in vain.

“Marten…” She wants to say ‘don’t’ but the word won’t leave her mouth. Her cheeks are hot and when she glances into the mirror, she can see how much she’s blushing.

He slowly slips the gown off her shoulders, slides it past her waist and hips, lets it fall to the floor. Moves his hands up sensuously over the lines and curves of her body. She flushes all the way down to the neckline of her chemise.

“Marten…” she tries again. His fingers are writing those wonderful spells – ones that have nothing to do with magic – across her skin, but they’re standing in front of the mirror, and she’s not really comfortable with that, no, not like this, she’s never thought… Never thought of many things, a tiny voice – her own – whispers in her mind, but he showed her.

“You’re a work of art, Gabrielle,” he murmurs, lips brushing against her ear. She can see his smile in the mirror, knows he can feel her frantic heartbeat underneath his palm. “You should be admired.”

And then he leans in to kiss her neck – she can feel his lips on her skin – and his palm ventures lower and she would let her head fall back against his shoulder, but his reflection _is still looking at her_ and smiling, and anxiety creeps up her spine just as Marten’s clever hands make her shiver. Gabrielle closes her eyes, trembling. Another thing she didn’t want to know about herself. It’s mortifying. It’s exhilarating. It’s…

“Just an illusion, love. A simple thing.” Marten kisses her shoulder, his caresses soothing. “No need to be afraid.”

Gabrielle blinks and closes her eyes, even though the reflection is now as it should be. Or maybe the lips on her neck are. She’s not certain. She’d rather not know.

“Why not both?” he whispers against her shoulder, teeth scraping skin, but he is still gentle. “It seems such a waste, not to be able to look at you and see every expression on your lovely face…” He kisses her as she turns her head towards him, and with a sigh she gives in to the familiar taste of honey and smoke and roses. When he puts his arms around her, she glances into the mirror – the wide sleeves of his dark robe are covering her like wings, as if it was the night embracing her. Not a sight she could ever forget. “I wanted you to remember,” he mutters, with an arm around her waist, his hand sliding up her hip, lifting the hem of her chemise. “When your husband is back and we cannot meet, I want you to look into the mirror and remember.”

Gabrielle looks and knows she should be ashamed, but thinks there is something beautiful in seeing them together like that – she can see little more than his robe, wrapped around them both like a cloud of smoke, and their pale faces above it as they kiss, their dark hair mingling so that she can’t tell where they end and begin. There’s something beautiful in seeing herself and him in one picture, within one frame – two panes of glass put together and fitting perfectly. Maybe there is no dignity in love, but she can finally _see_ that she is not alone, and she no longer cares.

For the next week, she can’t even look at the mirror without blushing. Because she remembers, vividly.

When she wakes up in her cell, she knows it was real, once. That she was real, not a ghost suspended between the past that is vanishing and the future that might never come. In those dreams, she is _alive_. And when she wakes up, looks at the window and imagines Marten’s shadow in the shapes on the glass, she can almost – _almost_ – believe it.

Gabrielle knows she will never be able to get free of him. Because he looked inside her and saw her loneliness and regrets and fears, and all the most broken pieces of her, and then put them together into pictures and showed her they were still beautiful. It is something no seclusion will purge her of – memory of those moments when he showed her she still had _worth_ and was something to be admired, to be savored.

But now her life is in pieces again and he is not with her to assure her there are new images to be made of those shards yet. And she is not certain there are, not this time.

I loved thee, Marten, she thinks, I loved thee, and see how it ended. My palace, my prison, my water, my poison. My doom.

She knows in her heart that is what he will be. But there is no way out, not anymore, no matter how much she prays for it. No bars or spell could ever be as effective as a prison that was _chosen_ , and no cage holds as well as happiness, as a brief respite from sorrow.

During the day, she struggles to feel solid and she manages well enough, building herself anew from the brief, tiny moments – eat and wash and put on clothes and then work, thread by thread – moments that root her in place, in reality. But at dusk shadows fall over all her work and she can no longer see herself, and certainty slips away, as elusive as sunlight.

At dusk all her past is but a dream, and the only way out of dreams is to wake up. But the only way to wake up from life is to die. She knows – _feels_ , senses, hears it in her nightmares, glimpses it in the cracks on the window glass – that one way or another, Marten will be the one to wake her.

At dusk, when she is but a dream of a feverish mind, Gabrielle thinks she would have it no other way. It would that he was real, that everything – that all her dreams and forgotten fairy tales and broken memories were real. It would mean that _she_ was _real_ , too.


End file.
